


Cough Syrup

by rendawnie



Category: Pentagon (Korean Band)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Angst, Dreams, Falling In Love, Fantasy, Imagination, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Minor Violence, Poetic, Romance, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 21:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9516062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendawnie/pseuds/rendawnie
Summary: Ever since he’d breezed into the shop one day in June, taking refuge from a snowstorm outside, Hwitaek had been in love. He’d never forget the way Hyojong looked, with his cheeks pink and a crown of shimmering snowflakes that sat on top of his blonde hair. He’d never forget the way that when Hyojong opened his mouth and began to speak, he could finally understand the words another person was saying.Please read the tags on this fic fully before proceeding. There are possible triggers, including mental illness and major character death.





	

Hwitaek let out a sigh of boredom, staring at the Batman clock on the wall of the shop. It was upside down. He’d never noticed before, but he figured that was how it was supposed to be. It felt right. He glanced out of the window, wondering where Hyojong was. It was Saturday, and Hyojong hadn’t missed a Saturday visit to the shop, ever. Then again, it was a beautiful day outside. The sky was seafoam green and the grass shone blue and maybe Hyojong had better things to do than spend the time he usually did here, talking to Hwitaek while he worked his shift alone.

There was only one other employee at the little comics shop that barely anyone knew about, and after a while, Hwitaek had stopped scheduling them both on the same shifts. There were never more than two customers here at once, anyway. Nothing one person couldn’t handle.

Hwitaek could handle a lot, but he could hardly handle the way Hyojong made him feel.

Ever since he’d breezed into the shop one day in June, taking refuge from a snowstorm outside, Hwitaek had been in love. He’d never forget the way Hyojong looked, with his cheeks pink and a crown of shimmering snowflakes that sat on top of his blonde hair. He’d never forget the way that when Hyojong opened his mouth and began to speak, he could finally understand the words another person was saying.

They’d talked about everything that first day. Everything important that Hwitaek could possibly think of, Hyojong talked about it happily. He formed sentences at a dizzying rate, words pouring out of his mouth like lightning while Hwitaek listened and tried to keep up. Hyojong loved comics, just like Hwitaek did. He especially loved the X-Men, just like Hwitaek did. They sat in the big plush chairs in one corner of the shop and talked for a small infinity next to the fireplace, while the cool flames splashed closer and closer to them. Hwitaek wanted to be consumed.

Of course, there were other topics. Hwitaek found out that Hyojong was a student. He was studying at the college in town. He’d just discovered this shop existed, and he was over the moon about it. Hwitaek liked the way Hyojong smiled and leaned closer to him every so often. The way his fingers brushed Hwitaek’s knee sometimes as he talked, and the way he left them there sometimes, while Hwitaek bubbled over inside and tried as hard as he could not to let it show.

He liked the way Hyojong’s affection came easily, but quietly. Hwitaek didn’t have to work for it. It was just there. They liked each other.

Some days when Hyojong swept through the door, he wasn’t as transparent. Hwitaek could return the little electric sparks that sizzled when they touched. He could lace their fingers together and feel the weight of Hyojong leaned against him.

It wasn’t always that way. There was an incandescence to Hyojong, usually, that Hwitaek found charming. Hyojong glowed softly, shades of purple and pink and blue that Hwitaek had never seen before. Those colors got brighter when he grinned at Hwitaek, while they sat Indian-style on the floor behind the counter, sharing Choco Boys and little secrets Hwitaek had never told anyone else. It took Hwitaek a few weeks to notice that Hyojong never actually ate the treats they seemed to share. He hadn't expected him to, anyway.

One day, Hwitaek had gotten up the nerve to ask Hyojong why he glowed, why nothing about him made sense but everything about them was exactly right.

Hyojong had just smiled and leaned in close and whispered, “I’m a superhero, Hwitaek. I’m here to protect you.”

When Hyojong kissed him after that, Hwitaek could taste the cotton candy on his tongue and feel the way they made the room tremble together.

Today, the room was still and Hwitaek was alone, and he ached for it to not be that way.

Finally, half an hour before close, Hyojong’s face pressed against the window of the shop and he came in without opening the door.

Hwitaek couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face, one that mirrored Hyojong’s shy grin almost exactly. He held a small bag in his mittened hands when he appeared in front of Hwitaek, his coat soaked with the winter sun, but neither of them mentioned it until Hwitaek was closing the shop up for the night thirty minutes later.

“I got something for you,” Hyojong said softly, holding the bag out to Hwitaek as he took the drawer out of the register. Hwitaek froze mid-movement. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had given him a present, especially not anyone he cared for as much as he cared about Hyojong. He put the drawer back down on the counter. It could wait. Hyojong never would. If Hwitaek didn’t pay attention, sometimes, he floated away.

They stood close together in the middle of the floor, so close that their foreheads touched gently when Hyojong glanced down to pull a small box from the bag and so close that their lips brushed when he looked up again and gave it to Hwitaek.

He blushed, dusty pink covering his cheeks as he took the box with shaking hands. He didn’t know why it felt so important, why this little gesture should seem so big. It just did. Everything he and Hyojong did together felt bigger than the whole world.

Carefully, Hwitaek lifted the lid off the box and peeked inside. Hyojong had taken a small step away from him, watching him open the gift silently. Warmth still radiated off of him, just like it always did.

Hwitaek bit his lip, staring at the simple leather bracelet that sat on a bed of velvet inside the box. It matched the one that Hyojong wore every day perfectly.

“Happy birthday, Hui,” Hyojong murmured, his eyes a shimmering shade of violet, and Hwitaek couldn’t remember ever telling Hyojong his birthday, but it didn’t matter. Not when he felt so happy he thought his heart might bleed gold onto the floor.

Hyojong helped him put it on, and then they sank back down to the bottom of the ocean that flowed behind the counter, watching the neon fish swim across the walls of the shop as they talked and felt and made every second they spent together last a tiny eternity.

They’d been there for a while, and Hwitaek had completely forgotten about his nightly duties to close the shop properly, when he couldn’t stop himself from asking the one other question that had been on the tip of his tongue for a very, very long time.

“Hyojong, what are we?” Hwitaek asked quietly, so afraid of the answer that he closed his eyes as he laid in Hyojong’s arms, Hyojong’s chin resting on top of his head as he hummed an acknowledgment of the question. He didn’t continue for a long while, so Hwitaek waited. He waited and waited and he would have waited forever, but Hyojong didn’t make him.

“We’re superheroes, Hui,” he said again, same as he had ten, twenty times before, his voice gentle like silk pooling at the base of Hwitaek’s spine. “We’re everything.”

Hwitaek smiled a little, and then he frowned, because that wasn’t the question he’d asked and it wasn’t the answer he’d needed.

“You know what I mean,” he murmured after a moment, and he felt Hyojong grin against his hair.

“It doesn’t matter what we are, Hui,” Hyojong said next. “Life’s too short to care about all that.”

Hwitaek sighed, but he felt strangely satisfied by Hyojong’s words. They didn’t make sense, not at all. But neither did Hyojong, and neither did they, and Hwitaek sort of liked it that way.

Silence passed between them, heavy as a feather, and Hwitaek was in the midst of trying to pull his shoes from the bubblegum carpet underneath them when he heard Hyojong’s voice again, right in his ear like they were pressed against each other, instead of drifting apart slowly even as they sat together like this.

“Hui, I...I think I love--”

Hyojong was interrupted by scratching sounds at the door, scratching and then banging, and every single hair on Hwitaek’s body stood on end. He and Hyojong stared at each other, Hwitaek’s eyes wide and Hyojong’s twin blue pools of worry, but behind that worry, there was knowing. Acceptance. Hwitaek didn’t understand, he didn’t understand and he didn’t have time to. He stood up quickly, squinting towards the door, watching as the man who stood on the other side with evil in his eyes realized it wasn’t even locked, because Hwitaek had forgotten about everything the minute he saw Hyojong. He’d forgotten to lock up and he’d forgotten about the drawer of cash still sitting on the glass counter. It was only half full. It was all they could get, even on the best day.

When the door burst open a moment later, Hwitaek realized his mistake.

It wasn’t a man at all. It was a monster.

The monster snarled and charged in and Hwitaek saw the black tar dripping from its fingertips a second before he saw the silver glint of the knife in its hand. He saw the monster’s slitted green eyes dart to the cash drawer, and he moved in front of it without thinking. Hyojong stood beside him, much calmer than Hwitaek could have ever dreamed of being. Calm and steady. The only constant thing in Hwitaek’s life.

“What do you want?” Hwitaek asked the monster, even though he already knew.

Just before the monster lunged at the cash, at Hwitaek, it growled, low and distorted.

_ Everything. _

Hwitaek didn’t move. He closed his eyes, and he waited.

He didn’t feel anything.

No pain. No injury. Nothing.

He didn’t hear anything, either.

The shop went eerily quiet. It was too quiet, the silence was getting louder and louder and buzzing in Hwitaek’s ears, and then he heard a muted  _ thump. _

Hwitaek’s eyes flew open, glancing around the shop manically. The monster was gone. The monster was gone, the money was gone, and Hyojong was on the floor.

Hwitaek’s knees gave out from under him and he went crashing down into the muddy carpet next to Hyojong. He’d never seen Hyojong look more real, more solid. More fragile. He drew his eyes over Hyojong’s face, pale and already going cold, down his chest, and to the gash in his belly, gushing the same silver as the knife had, when it shone in the fluorescent lights of the shop.

There wasn’t anything to say. Hyojong smiled at Hwitaek. The silver pouring out of him turned red, turned into blood, thick and sticky on Hwitaek’s hands as he pressed them into Hyojong’s stomach frantically, trying to help, trying to anything. Trying. Always  _ trying. _

Hyojong pushed his hand away weakly. “It’s too late…” he murmured, his voice cracked like his lips were, all the shallow breaths leaving them way too fast.

Hwitaek rocked back violently, without warning. He could feel his face contorting into a million different expressions, all of them shattering as quick as they had arrived.

“What did you do?” he choked out, sickly pink tears obscuring his vision. He wiped them away carelessly, wiped them on his shirt and his arm and he didn’t care because he only wanted to see Hyojong. Hyojong, who was still smiling, just a little.

“Saved you. Protected...protected you…” Hyojong managed, coughing, the action shaking his body more than it should have.

“No,” Hwitaek whispered, his voice strained with all the emotion he felt, every brilliant color of every sky he’d ever seen leaking out of his eyes and raining over Hyojong in a useless waterfall.

Hyojong squeezed his hand. “Told you I was a superhero.”

Hwitaek didn’t answer that. He didn’t know how. All the silver was gone. Only red remained. So much red. It stained the carpet and both of their clothes and Hwitaek’s hands. Hyojong’s eyes were brown again, not violet or blue or any other color Hwitaek had ever seen them. He thought just then, fleetingly, that they were most beautiful like this. That Hyojong was beautiful when he was real.

Hyojong took one last shuddering breath, and Hwitaek looked away. He couldn’t watch. Not again. Not for the hundredth time.

+

“Hwitaek.”

Hwitaek shoots up in bed, his breaths ragged and unsteady. He’s sweating. He’s always sweating.

“Hwitaek,” the doctor says again, and Hwitaek forces his eyes open before he’s ready. It doesn’t matter. He’s never ready.

He's still here. Still in this place he can't seem to fully escape from, anymore.

The hospital is cold. Not cold like winter, but cold like  _ detached.  _ Everything here is clinical. Colorless. All sharp edges and bright, garish lights that sting Hwitaek’s eyes.

All the things Hyojong isn’t. Wasn’t.

Wasn’t ever.

The doctor sits on the edge of Hwitaek’s bed, even though Hwitaek didn’t invite him to. He smiles a little sadly. Hwitaek can’t stand it, the pity in everyone’s eyes. The concern. The fear.

“Is it a good day, Hwitaek? Is he real today?”

Hwitaek looks away. He shakes his head.

He hears the doctor make a quiet  _ tsk,  _ hears the small, scratching sounds of pen moving over paper.

“It’s been a year, Hwitaek. One year today. Do you want to hear the truth today?”

Hwitaek begins to cry, silent tears slipping down his cheeks. He nods, the slightest movement, but it’s enough for the doctor.

“A year ago today, your boyfriend Kim Hyojong was killed in an armed robbery situation while he visited you at work, at your shop.”

Every single word feels like a hammer slamming into Hwitaek’s head and his heart and his everywhere, every place it can hurt him anymore.

“He died protecting you.”

Hwitaek doesn’t react. Not on the outside.

“Shortly after that, you suffered a breakdown and were brought here, to this hospital. In going through your file, we discovered you had a history of psychosis. Hallucinations, mainly.”

The doctor clears his throat, reciting the words that Hwitaek knows he’s been told over and over.

“You’ve been here ever since. We don’t know how much longer you’ll have to be here. There hasn’t been...a lot of improvement.”

There’s nothing to say.

“Your reality appears to change from day to day. It’s rarely the same. The only constant is you reliving what happened to Hyojong, in your dreams.”

Hwitaek licks his lips. Swallows hard. Doesn’t know what he’s going to say until he says it. He glances up at the doctor, still occupying an edge of his small bed.

“If my reality keeps changing, how do I know any of this is real? This, right now. You. This hospital. How do I know?” Hwitaek asks, and he hears his voice for the first time. Tired. Defeated. Laced with pain, the kind you feel on the inside. The kind that never stops.

The doctor sighs a little, thinking of how to respond. Hwitaek can see the moment he gives up trying to sugarcoat it.

“You don’t, Hwitaek. I guess you don’t. I guess you just keep fighting until you figure out which reality you want to live in, and you hope it’s the right one.”

He stands up, brushing off his white coat. “I’ll send the orderly with your meds in a few minutes. See you at four for our session, Hwitaek.”

Hwitaek watches him go, and then he lays down again, curling up into a ball as small as he can get. Maybe if it’s small enough, he’ll just disappear.

He doesn’t disappear.

He’s still there when the orderly arrives.

Hwitaek doesn’t bother looking up all the way into the guy’s face. He focuses on the wall next to his bed. He's still looking when the patterns in the wallpaper change, from boring, bland stripes to swirling splashes of colors that don't have names, and he knows.

He glances away from the wall numbly, and somewhere far away a soft voice says, “Got your meds, Hui.”

Hwitaek frowns. No one here calls him that. He wouldn’t let them if they tried. That was only for…

_ HYOJONG,  _ the letters on the orderly’s nametag spell out.

Hwitaek is still staring at them when Hyojong sits down.

He looks like Hyojong, when Hyojong was alive and not a shimmering, sparkling fantasy. He smiles like Hyojong, when Hyojong was being gentle, taking care of Hwitaek. Protecting him.

He holds out a little paper cup filled with pills. There’s five today. There's five every day. They've stopped trying new methods. New cocktails.

Hwitaek takes the cup with shaking hands. He doesn’t dare look back at Hyojong while he swallows the pills in one go.

_ This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. _

_ This is a dream. I’m still asleep. _

_ I don’t want to wake up. _

Hyojong watches Hwitaek until he’s gotten the pills down and opened his mouth, sticking his tongue out obediently to show that they’re down his throat successfully. He nods, making notes on Hwitaek’s chart.

They look at each other in silence for a while. Hwitaek thinks he might still be crying. Hyojong either doesn’t notice, or is being kind enough not to say anything about it.

Hwitaek is confused. But then, he’s always confused. It’s always foggy, all the time. This, Hyojong, whoever this orderly actually is, is just another face of the fog. He’s not real. He can’t be.

After a while, Hyojong smiles again, and it’s quiet and it makes Hwitaek ache deeper than he’s allowed himself to in a long time. It feels good. It cuts through the haze.

Hyojong sits forward in the chair he’s pulled up next to Hwitaek’s bed, next to where Hwitaek’s pressed himself into the corner of his mattress, knees tucked under his chin.

“This is real, Hui. This is the reality. Right now. I promise you, this is real. Just...just stay with me in this, okay? Please. Stay with me.”

Hwitaek stares at Hyojong, wondering why he’s talking to him like this. Wondering why it feels good, why it makes his heart beat faster and his cheeks warm and his everything almost a little happy.

Hyojong sighs, running a hand through his hair. He’s lost in thought for a moment, and then he pushes up the sleeve of his sweater, and Hwitaek watches as he fiddles with the clasp of a strangely familiar leather bracelet. One he’s seen in a dream, maybe. He gets it undone and off his wrist finally, and then Hyojong holds it out to Hwitaek, resting in his palm. Hwitaek looks at him, puzzled. Hyojong chews on his lip for the briefest second before he speaks again.

“I...I read in your chart that it’s your birthday today. I think...I thought you should have a present, at least. So. Here. Happy birthday, Hui.”

By the time Hyojong is done talking, he looks confused too, like he doesn’t understand why he’s saying any of this, why he’s giving Hwitaek this gift, but Hwitaek pulls the bracelet from his hand anyway. He doesn’t put it on. It sits in his lap. He stares at it. Maybe if he stares at it long enough, it’ll disappear, like everything else.

Hyojong doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then he gets up to leave and Hwitaek struggles to find his voice through the clouds in his lungs.

“Who are you? Who are you, really?” he asks desperately, reaching for Hyojong’s hand before he can get too far away.

When Hwitaek’s hand brushes against Hyojong’s, it passes right through him, like he’s made of thin air. Hwitaek makes himself look up again. This is familiar. He remembers this. He remembers it from his dreams.

Hyojong’s eyes are emerald green now, sparkling with turquoise tears. He smiles, and it’s sad like when the doctor smiled at Hwitaek, but there’s so much more behind it, so much that hits Hwitaek right in the chest and steals his breath away. He’s still gasping, still working through it, eyes squeezed shut again to block out whatever he can, when Hyojong finally replies.

“I’m a superhero, Hui. Just like you.”

When Hwitaek opens his eyes, he’s alone again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](http://bulletproof-bad-writing.tumblr.com) if you want to yell at me for this.


End file.
